Current Affairs Questions

Explanation :

• Subansiri River (gold river), originates in the Tibet Plateau and enters India through Miri hills in Arunachal Pradesh.
• It is the largest tributary of the Brahmaputra.

It flows east and southeast into India, then south to the Assam Valley, where it joins the Brahmaputra River in Lakhimpur district.

Explanation :

• The size and the composition of the IMFC mirrors that of the Executive Board. The IMFC has 24 members who are central bank governors, ministers, or others of comparable rank and who are usually drawn from the governors of the Fund’s 189 member countries.
• Each member country and each group of member countries that elects an Executive Director appoints a member of the IMFC.
• The IMFC usually meets twice a year, at the Bank-Fund Annual and Spring Meetings.
• For each meeting, the Managing Director prepares a draft agenda that is discussed by the Executive Board, approved by the IMFC Chair, and formally adopted by the IMFC at the meeting.
• At the end of the meetings, the Committee issues a communiqué summarizing its views.
• These communiqués provide guidance for the IMF’s work program during the half year leading up to the next Spring or Annual Meetings.

Function

• The IMFC advises and reports to the IMF Board of Governors on the supervision and management of the international monetary and financial system, including on responses to unfolding events that may disrupt the system.
• It also considers proposals by the Executive Board to amend the Articles of Agreement and advises on any other matters that may be referred to it by the Board of Governors.
• Although the IMFC has no formal decision-making powers, in practice, it has become a key instrument for providing strategic direction to the work and policies of the Fund.

Explanation :

• Established in February 2015 during the Ebola outbreak and modified in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCRT grants complement donor financing and the IMF concessional lending through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT).
• The trust allows the IMF to join international debt relief efforts when poor countries are hit by the most catastrophic of natural disasters and to assist poor countries battling public health disasters—such as epidemics or global pandemics of infectious disease.

Eligibility

• Assistance through the CCRT is currently available to low-income countries eligible for concessional borrowing through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT).
• Countries which have either a per capita income below the International Development Association’s (IDA) operational cutoff (currently US$1,175).
• Small states with a population below 1.5 million and a per capita income below twice the IDA cutoff (currently US$2,350).

Structure

The CCRT has two windows:

• Catastrophe Containment window, to provide assistance in containing a public health disaster
• Post-Catastrophe Relief window, to provide exceptional assistance in the wake of a catastrophic natural disaster.

Explanation :

• Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a tropical parasitic disease caused by the protist Trypanosoma cruzi.
• It is spread mostly by insects known as Triatominae, or "kissing bugs".
• In the early stage, symptoms may include fever, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, or swelling at the site of the bite.

Mainly because of the increased population mobility in the last decades, most infected people live in urban settings (urbanization) and the disease has been increasingly detected in the United States of America, Canada, and many European and some African, Eastern Mediterranean and Western Pacific countries.

Explanation :

• The Artemis (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) program is an ongoing crewed spaceflight program carried out predominantly by NASA, with the goal of landing "the first woman and the next man" on the Moon, specifically at the lunar south pole region by 2024.
• Other partners in the mission include European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Australian Space Agency (ASA).

Mission Objectives

• Find and use water and other critical resources needed for long-term exploration
• Investigate the Moon’s mysteries and learn more about our home planet and the universe
• Learn how to live and operate on the surface of another celestial body where astronauts are just three days from home
• Prove the technologies we need before sending astronauts on missions to Mars, which can take up to three years roundtrip

Key Details

• NASA sees Artemis as the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon, laying the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars
• NASA’s powerful new rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), will send astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft nearly a quarter million miles from Earth to lunar orbit.
• The agency will fly two missions around the Moon to test its deep space exploration systems. NASA is working toward launching Artemis I, an uncrewed flight to test the SLS and Orion spacecraft together, followed by the Artemis II mission, the first SLS and Orion test flight with crew.
• NASA will land astronauts on the Moon by 2024 on the Artemis III mission and about once a year thereafter.

Explanation :

• The Patriot (MIM-104) is a long-range, all-altitude, all-weather air defence system to counter tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and advanced aircraft.
• The Patriot System replaced the Nike Hercules system as the U.S. Army's primary High to Medium Air Defense (HIMAD) system, and replaced the MIM-23 Hawk system as the U.S. Army's medium tactical air defense system.
• The missile has a range of 70km and a maximum altitude greater than 24km.
• It is equipped with a track-via-missile (TVM) guidance system.
• Midcourse correction commands are transmitted to the guidance system from the mobile engagement control centre.

Explanation :

• The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on (GRACE-FO) mission is a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).
• Launched on 22 May 2018, GRACE-FO is a successor to the original GRACE mission, which began orbiting Earth on March 17, 2002
• The primary objective of the GRACE-FO Mission is to obtain precise global and high-resolution models for both the static and the time variable components of the Earth's gravity field.
• The GRACE missions measure variations in gravity over Earth's surface, producing a new map of the gravity field every 30 days.
• Thus, GRACE shows how the planet's gravity differs not only from one location to another, but also from one period of time to another.

Significance

• It will continue the work of tracking Earth's water movement to monitor changes in underground water storage, the amount of water in large lakes and rivers, soil moisture, ice sheets and glaciers, and sea level caused by the addition of water to the ocean.
• These discoveries provide a unique view of Earth's climate and have far-reaching benefits to society and the world's population.

Explanation :

• The Kuril Islands is a volcanic archipelago in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast that stretches approximately 1,300 km northeast from Hokkaido, Japan to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean.
• These form part of the ring of tectonic instability encircling the Pacific Ocean referred to as the Ring of Fire.
• The Islands are currently under Russian administration. However, they are also claimed by Japan.
• Four islands - which Russia calls the Southern Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories - are the subject of a 60-year-old dispute between the two nations.
• These four islands - Kunashir (known in Japanese as Kunashiri), Iturup (Etorofu), Shikotan and the rocky Habomai islets.

Explanation :

• Reunion is an overseas department and region of the French Republic and an island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar and 175 km southwest of Mauritius.
• Administratively, it is one of the overseas departments of France.
• Like the other four overseas departments, it is also one of the 18 regions of France, with the modified status of overseas region, and an integral part of the republic with the same status as Metropolitan France.
• The official language is French. In addition, the majority of the region's population speaks Reunion Creole.
• The Island is home to one of the world’s most active volcanoes, the Piton de la Fournaise, which is also a World Heritage site.

Explanation :

• Kurzarbeit is Germany’s existing scheme that provides for partial compensation for a worker’s earnings in adverse situations.
• Kurzarbeit is German for “short-work”. The policy was rolled out during the 2008 economic crisis while its origins date back as far as the early 20th century, before and after World War I.
• Germany’s use of Kurzarbeit during the 2008-2009 economic crisis has been cited as one of the reasons why the country was able to hold its unemployment rate to within 7.5 per cent even during the recession.

Mode of Working

• The policy provides for a short-time work allowance, called kurzarbeitgeld, which partially compensates for lost earnings during uncertain economic situations.
• They can apply for short-term work benefits under the scheme, with the government stepping in to pay employees a part of their lost income.
• This helps the companies retain their employees instead of laying them off, and allows the latter to sustain themselves for a period of up to 12 months.
• Payment under Kurzarbeit is calculated on the basis of net loss of earnings. As per Germany’s Federal Agency for Work, short-time employees generally receive about 60 per cent of the flat-rate net wage, In case there is at least one child in the house of the short-time worker, he/she receives 67 per cent of the flat-rate net wage.